Although my home is in Suffolk, I am fortunate to get to spend some time in The Great Wen - specifically in the North-Eastern part of London. So I was able to join a local guided walk yesterday, on the 115th anniversary of the event known as 'The Tottenham Outrage'. On 23rd January 1909, a pair of Jewish Latvian radicals (labelled as 'Anarchists' by the media at the time) named Paul Hefeld and Jacob Lepidus staged an armed robbery in Tottenham, stealing the weekly wages (about £80) of Schnurmann's India Rubber factory (where Hefeld had been briefly employed), just off the Tottenham High Road. It so happened that the factory was also right opposite the Tottenham Police Station - hence the alarm was very quickly raised, and the robbers pursued. A chase ensued, which lasted at least a couple of hours and covered about 6 miles, and which caused the deaths of four people, including both of the robbers, a Police Constable and a child, and the wounding or injury of at least 20 other people including seven policemen.
Our walk followed (most of) the route of the chase, through part of Tottenham, onto the nearby marshes, and on towards Highams Park and Hale End, pausing at various points to mark the significant events along the way. First, the site of the actual robbery, at the gates of Schnurmann's factory, where the company car with chauffeur and a young wages clerk were set upon by the robbers.
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| Site of the robbery...now a car park |
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| ... and the Police Station (centre left), right opposite! |
It seems the robbers made off with the heavy bag of money, and were also carrying quite a lot of ammunition - it is reported that over the course of the chase they fired over 400 shots at their pursuers! The factory owner and his staff apparently gave chase in their car, but at some point a bullet hit its radiator, immobilising it. Police from the station of course joined the chase, but only after having to smash open their weapons cabinet, because no-one could find the key! That was just the first incident in a series which seem to give the whole affair a semi-comical Keystone Cops aspect - I found myself picturing events like the chase sequence from one of their silent movie capers, complete with gunsmoke as weapons are wildly discharged. But of course, the gunfire was all too real, and had tragic consequences.
The first of those consequences happened by St Mary's church in Mitchley Road, N17:
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| The first fatality - a 10-year-old child |
Ten-year-old Ralph Joscelyne was a baker's delivery boy, caught in the crossfire and killed. The killers kept running towards Tottenham Marshes, but PC William Tyler took a shortcut and confronted them at the site of a refuse incinerator - he was also shot, and subsequently died. The refuse facility site is currently being re-developed, but its original perimeter wall still bounds the road - for now, at least.
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| Site of PC Tyler's fatal wounding |
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| and memorial plaque on Tottenham Police Station |
The killers reached the edge of the built-up area ( really the edge of London at the time ) and crossed the railway tracks via the rather wonderfully-named Carbuncle Passage (which follows the Carbuncle Stream, which even today is well-named, I feel)
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| possibly the best street name in London.. |
Having crossed the railway, the scene changed to the open spaces of Tottenham Marshes - still undeveloped today,
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| onto the Marshes.. |
At one point on the marshes, the pursuit ran across the Chalk Footbridge - at this point, one PC Nicod got close enough to take aim with his Police issue Webley revolver, which misfired. The robbers returned fire (they carried more advanced weapons, Hefeld a .32 Browning automatic pistol, Lepidus a 6.5mm Bergmann) and wounded Nicod in the calf and thigh.
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| Chalk Footbridge - where PC Nicod was wounded |
We followed the course of the chase along the River Lea Navigation and around the perimeter of the Banbury Reservoir, but skipped (access not being easy, plus we needed a lunchbreak - the cafe of Sainsbury's Low Hall branch proved convenient) possibly the most comedic part of the chase. In 1909 Helfeld and Lepidus commandeered a No. 9 Tram on the Chingford Road, forcing the conductor to drive it - pursued by a policemen in a commandeered pony and trap, until the unfortunate pony was shot down, and another tram full of police oficers! The fugitives then transferred to a horse-drawn milk cart, which they turned over, then hijacked a grocer's cart, but could not release the brakes! Finally they abandoned that and continued on foot, along the River Ching, but ended up cornered in a dead end by a railway bridge. Lepidus climbed a fence to escape but Helfeld could not, and shot himself as the Police closed in - he died weeks later in hospital.
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| River Ching railway bridge - end of the line for one fugitive |
Jacob Lepidus continued running, and holed up in a cottage next to the Royal Oak pub, where he was soon surrounded. After some further slapstick moments ( he may have tried to hide in the chimney(!), and a policeman climbing a ladder had to rapidly descend when fired on ), finally the officers broke into the house and Lepidus died in an exchange of fire - it later transpired that he had taken his own life as the police broke into the room - and so ended the chase. The cottage is long gone, but the pub remains ( it had been rebuilt only in 1906 but is now probably the oldest building nearby ) and has a signboard with a decent potted history of the event.
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| Royal Oak pub - the cottage was next door |
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| The pub's information board |
It was a drear January day, of course, and raining at the start, the weather forecast had not been good (in between 'named' storms), but it dried and brightened up later, so the walking was OK, admittedly not through the most picturesque parts of NE London! But it was really very interesting to follow the route of the chase and try to picture how events had unfolded in 1909.
Various discussion points came up - especially the motivation of the attackers. It seemed to us present that the money was perhaps not really the crux of the matter - why stage a robbery next to a police station, robbing people who would recognise you? And carrying hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which must have been very heavy, on top of the money bag? It seems quite possible that the aim was not to fund their political activities but perhaps to simply provoke a confrontation and draw attention to their cause - that of Jewish communities suffering Pogroms in their homelands under the Czarist Russian regime. They clearly were prepared to use extreme violence and did not value their own lives - does this reflect the sort of nihilistic/suicidal attitude that we have seen more recently in various actions by Al Queda/ISIS and other groups? It seems the money bag was never recovered - did it end up in the cottage chimney, or in the river or marsh? One rumour was apparently that the grocer whose cart had been hijacked soon afterwards moved to rural Essex and opened his own shop - had he applied the rule of 'finders keepers'?
Another point was the 'public participation' aspect - it seems that many members of the public were willing to 'have a go' as the chase continued. From the very start, passers-by tried to intervene ( And several were shot, for their pains), one story says that a housewife threw potatoes at the fugitives! Also an 'eye-opener' was the number of members of the public who were able to produce a selection of weapons to join in the gunfights - it seems a fair number of residents had shotguns handy, and perhaps some local ex-army veterans ( with the Boer War only a few years in the past ) may have had 'souvenir' weapons to hand. As the chase progressed onto the Marshes, a couple of gents who had been out hunting ducks were persuaded by the police to assist, and at least one of the robbers was wounded by shotgun pellets. We worry about the level of gun and knife crimes in certain areas of London today ( hmm...including Tottenham, perhaps? ) - but perhaps it wasn't so very different 115 years ago? It became a sort of running joke as our excellent walk leader stopped at various points to describe the events of the chase, and almost inevitably added to the list of 'joe public' appearing with various weaponry at every point!
There is a good account of the event on Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Outrage - well worth reading if this has interested you. But my memory was also 'nudged' by the story - I have been dimly aware of the events described for many years, and I realised that this was because I had read about it in a wargames magazine article! A little light internet searching established that this was 'Anarchy in the UK' by Mike Bell, which had appeared in Duncan MacFarlane's Wargames World (annual supplement to Wargames Illustrated ) number 1, as far back as 1988! It's even possible to download a pdf version of the magazine - free from the nice people at Wargames Illustrated using this link https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Wargames-World-1.pdf
Perhaps even more interesting, Mike Bell's piece is actually a game, allowing us to wargame the events of January 1909, including a printable game board and pieces. It's a gridded 'chase' game, appropriately enough, and as various squares are landed on or passed, events can be triggered and pursuers activated - reading through the details for each significant square in effect gives you the narrative of the real-life chase. It was rather clever, I thought! Does anyone out there remember this piece, and if so, has anyone actually played the game? It reads pretty well, I suspect it could make an interesting game - now if you had suitable Edwardian period figures and vehicles in 28mm/40mm/54mm (anyone got a model tram?!) and say, a 6ft by 5ft table, the board could be modelled in 6-inch squares... Could be almost 'local interest' if the SELWG show remains at its venue in Edmonton... Just a thought!!
All in all, a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable day, even if a tad cold and damp, and thanks are due to the Leyton and Leytonstone Historical Society for organising the walk, and on the anniversary too!
I hope this has been interesting, I really enjoyed the day and was inspired to post it here having read several excellent 'local walk' reports on Mr. Nundanket's Horse and Musket Gaming blog - thanks for the idea, Chris!
I hope to do some actual gaming, painting etc soon, honest folks! Hopefully more of that in the next post, until then keep well, everyone.
